


A Hell Made of Driving and Silence

by cirque



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 19:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set two years (roughly) after the Truth, Sara Van de Kamp lives a normal life with her normal son, albeit with a string of strange events following him around. Like the strange circumstances in which she adopted another baby. Like the strange gifts given to him by his birth mother. Like the strange way Sara's new friend Monica acts around Billy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. SARA VAN DE KAMP I

**Author's Note:**

> This is far from finished, but I really want feedback on it (guys! please!). I originally intended this to be told solely from Mrs Van de Kamp's POV, giving her a voice and, well, everything CC didn't. But as often happens, my FEEEELINGS invaded, and it ended up becoming about the Spenders, and Scully's terrible guilt, and M&S's life on the run, and about just how much CSM interfered with Samantha's childhood...

She checked the cake on the counter with the image in the cookbook: perfection. She’d followed the recipe like a devout, and here was enough cream frosting and green piping to make this day a day to remember.

            Sara turned a quick 180 and grinned at the baby in the highchair. “What do you think?” she asked of the infant, who gurgled and raised a hand in response. “I’ll take that as ‘well done mommy, it’s wonderful.” She giggled at Marlo, who raised the other hand and bounced, demanding to be lifted free of the strappings of the chair. Sara obeyed, scooping her daughter up and waltzing across the grande kitchen, throwing the cake one last admiring look as she went. “Think Billy will like it?”

            Marlo chuckled. Sara kissed her head. She and Jack had often joked that their life had done an about turn when Billy entered their life, but for Sara it went beyond the laughing. She’d been running Bill to the clinic late one night for a fever, to find the clinic in uproar about an abandoned newborn baby. Days later she’d contacted the local police, and the local adoption agency, and one thing had led to another, as they often did, and that was all the information she had to tell Marlo, if Marlo ever asked for the story of her birth. One thing often led to another where Billy was concerned. He’d cried on his first day of preschool, and the next day the place had become infested with rats and closed for two months. He often cried at the attention Marlo received, so Jack had brought him a little freshwater aquarium, and a small goldfish he named Emily. Things tended to happen when Billy was around.

            Sara reached the pantry, grabbed a pack of candles from the highest shelf, and padded back to the kitchen. “Three candles for your big brother,” she informed Marlo as she aligned them in the frosting. She worked slowly; dutifully making it perfect, weeping a little inside that next year there would be four candles on his cake, then five, then double digits, then the teenage years where she would not be permitted to bake him a cake… She couldn’t help but cast a throwaway thought to his other mother, the one who came before. It wasn’t a habit she enjoyed, thinking about the women who brought her children into the world, but on birthdays it was nigh impossible. At the mommy and baby group, Sara’s friends spoke about their experiences of labour, and of agony, and the heart-stopping joy of it all, and Sara could only gaze at Marlo blankly. Sara’s friends – bitter, hated friends, purveyors of birth stories and ultrasound pictures and cradling their babies who had matching hair and eyes and DNA. Billy had red hair, Marlo had blond; Sara and Jack were dark.

            Three years to this day… What could Sara say? On this day three years ago, she was perfectly childless, running about and cleaning the house and not fit to burst with a bundle of joy. Three years to the day, somewhere in the world, a woman with no name had bent with labour, to push and nurture a red-headed baby into the world. As she twiddled the candles through her fingers, breathing in the scent of Marlo’s fresh washed hair, her mind was lost in the questions that surrounded Billy’s first eight months of life, before Sara had ever known him, held him, loved him.

            He’d arrived like clockwork, not a few minutes later than the social worker had said on the phone. They’d handed him over, and that was the first time that Sara had faith in the love at first sight principle. His birth mother, that woman so nameless and yet so deserving of Sara’s acknowledgements, had packed him a small travel bag of things: a hat with bunny ears, which was now nestled on Marlo’s head; a pillow with his name embroidered, which the boy still treasured now; a Moby Dick picture book, which Billy could not sleep without; and a soft toy, a little grey plush alien, which had come with a note attached, bearing a small inked ‘X’. Sara had framed this note above Billy’s bed, and told him it was a kiss that he could see whenever he liked.

            Marlo launched forward, eyes on the cake, and Sara swept her out of reach. No such bag had Marlo’s birth mother left her with. Not even a date of birth; on the certificate that Sara and Jack had registered, they’d given the day that she had been found in the clinic, the day that Billy topped his fever, as Marlo’s birthday. No one had loved Marlo to miss her, to call for her, to want her back, to write a note to be opened on her eighteenth birthday. Marlo was all Sara and Jack, while Billy and his plush alien came with unanswered questions.

            Sara jumped: Jack stood at the doorway, leaning in gracelessly, a goofy grin spread like butter all over his face, lighting him up. “How about that cake?”

            Sara gestured, “It’s done. All done. Marlo was just telling me how she admires the little touch of almonds around the edges.”

            “I bet she was,” Jack ticked his daughter’s bare feet and hoisted the cake into his arms, pausing to allow Sara to light the candles with the matches they kept in a drawer.

            They walked in single file, like a procession to meet a stranger, the cake and Marlo held like precious gifts, as they crossed through to the living room, where Puck the dog was keeping all of Billy’s friends laughing.

            “Happy birthday to you,” sang Jack as they entered the room, and the parents from the mommy and baby class picked up the verse, clapping and cheering as Billy went an uncomfortable shade of red and hid behind Puck’s massive bulk. Sara deposited Marlo with Blonde-haired-blue-eyed-perfect-housewife-Jenny and moved to cover her son’s face with kisses. He sat amidst a layer of popped blue balloons and one of those spiteful hated friends from the mommy and baby class had tied ribbons in his red hair. Sara smoothed down his cowlick, and stared about at them, sizing up the potential threats. Jenny, who cradled Marlo as if she were a delicate vase, was quick to please, but too new to the group to partake in the teasing like the others. But the others… Sara didn’t doubt they’d filled Billy’s head with doubting questions about the origin of his fiery hair. As she scanned the group, she was only certain of one that she could rule out: Monica who, though reserved and cool, was the closest thing to a friend that the mommy and baby class had ever given Sara.

            “Deep thoughts my love?” Jack chided from across the room, where he and Billy’s friends were piling the gifts high. She laughed him down and gently pushed Bill towards the presents, and Puck baled like a moorhound when the little boy treaded his tail into the carpet.

            “Monica,” Sara regained her trail of thought, half watching her son and half turning to her friend. “How is the little one?”

            “Oh,” Monica slipped from her chair to sit beside Sara on the carpet. “He’s fine. Still got the fever, but the rash has gone down. Doctor says he should be out and about in no time.”

            “That’s good. I mean, it’s strange having you here with no little one. It’ll be nice to meet him.”

            “I’ll admit,” Monica smiled, “it’s been awkward coming to these meetings every week without a baby. Makes me feel a bit like a fraud.”

            “Nonsense,” Sara slapped Monica’s arm gently, “it’s nice having you here.” In truth, Sara sought Monica’s company because her story of motherhood was stranger than her own. Monica’s son had been born with meningitis, he’d spent his first three months on earth in a glass incubator, like a test subject in one of Jack’s horror novels. And now, when he was almost Marlo’s age and Monica had dared to join mommy and baby classes, the poor pet had been struck with a fever and a rash once again. Poor thing… Sara stared over to Marlo, dreading to see her baby in the same way Monica saw her son.

            “He’ll be fighting fit in no time,” Sara grinned, “if he’s anything like you.” This was mostly guesswork on Sara’s part; for all Monica’s reservations and quietness, she carried a collected sense of toughness with her, an inimitable impression of hardiness and intelligence that Sara couldn’t quite place. What had Monica said she did? Crime writing?

            “He sure will. He’d get on fantastic with William.”

            “Oh.” Hardly anyone used Billy’s full name these days. It had been tradition when he was younger, and quieter, but as he aged Sara and Jack had felt it necessary to press their own label of identification on him, their own marker of parenthood, and he had been Billy or Bill ever since. “He would. Billy’s a rough playmate though.”

            Jack called for silence as Billy leaned in over the cake, his red side locks sweeping over his eyes as usual, and closed his eyes tight in a wish. He exhaled, and the candlelight danced before disappearing.

            “What did you wish for baby?”

            Billy looked up at her, smiling strangely. “It’s a secret mom.”

            Monica laughed. “Duh, mom.”

            On that note, Jack turned on the stereo player and the party games began, with the entire troupe of mommy and baby goers getting involved, aside from Monica, who sat on the sidelines in silence, cradling Marlo as if it were a sad occasion. Poor dear, Sara sighed inside, the pain she must be feeling, to be almost losing her little boy.

 

Hours dripped by like the singsong patter of a broken tap, games were won and lost in fits of tears, presents handed out, cake smeared over the dog, and in pairs of moms and children, the guest slipped through the doors with sleepy goodbyes.

            Monica was the last to leave. She and Billy had been chatting back and forth over a pack of baseball cards, which some astute and ridiculous member of the group had gifted him. Billy had no liking at all for baseball, beyond the knowledge that he could hit a ball as hard as he liked. Monica seemed knowledgeable enough, chirping away at the boy about this player or that.

            “The hidden sports jock,” Jack chuckled as he cleared away the popped balloons from Puck’s eager gaze.

            “Hardly,” Monica parried, “but a friend or two of mine knows a thing or two about baseball, and it’s a good conversation starter.”

            As she transferred the last of the cake from the plate into her mouth, Sara fondly wondered if it had been Monica who’d bought the cards.

            “Baby, tell Monica what you want to be when you’re grown up.”

            “A cowboy,” Billy proudly said, big grin lighting up the room as he stared up at Monica. “Or James Bond.”

            “An undercover cowboy,” Jack ruffled his hair as he departed the room. “Honey, I’ll put Marlo to bed, then clean up the kitchen.”

            “You’re a superstar.” Happy with the weight of the cake and the sight of her happy son, Sara leaned back against the sofa, listening to his back-and-forth chatter with Monica about secret agents and cattle ranches.

            As Sara had hoped, it wasn’t long before Bill fell asleep, sprawled over the open pack of baseball cards. “Today was a success,” she giggled nervously. She’d never planned a third birthday party before. As far as Billy was concerned, this was his first ever party, his debut in the world of toddler social gatherings. Sara was quite pleased that he had no memory of last year’s: no one had turned up, and Marlo had ruined the proceedings with her newborn wails.

            “Sure was,” Monica said gently. “He’s gorgeous.” She rested a hand on his head, flicking aside the hair from his forehead, staring down to that androgynous beauty that could only have reminded her of her own sweet boy, so far away.

            “Missing your baby?”

            “Something like that,” she replied dreamily.

            “Did you and your husband ever think of having another one?” Sara said lazily, feeling herself falling closer to sleep. She couldn’t rightly remember much about Monica’s husband, or indeed even if there was a Mr Reyes out there.

            “Not husband. Partner.”

            “Oh. Sorry. Go on.”

            “Well, no. With all the trouble with our first, I guess we were too nervous. Y’know. We may do. In the future. Who knows?”

            “Who knows indeed?” She waited a while, breathing calmly, watching Monica staring at Bill, feeling that overwhelming pride when someone complimented her son’s inherent beauty, for which Sara herself could take no credit, but treasured in her boy much more than she had first thought. “You know. With Billy, I was so nervous that he’d be taken off of me. That I’d slip up and he’d be taken away. That something was wrong with him, or with me, that someone wanted him back so badly that they’d do anything.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah. I guess I didn’t really stop panicking until Marlo came along. It was as if the universe were saying to me ‘you’re doing a good job, here’s another one’. Like karma, I guess. Do you believe in karma?”

            “Sure.” Monica grinned, “I’m open to the idea.”

            “I just wish… I don’t know. I just wish I could understand what in the world could make someone hand over their baby. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful every day for Billy, but I can’t help but feel guilty.”

            “Sara you mustn’t. There are some things we can’t question. Like how William and Marlo came to you, like how my baby boy is sick, like how some balloons pop before we can blow them up.” They shared a laugh.

            “I wonder what they’re like?”

            “Who?”

            “The women. The women who brought my babies into the world. I know so much about Marlo, but so little about Billy. The most I can figure is… they were driven to something so desperate, so painful, they must have been backed into a corner. Poor dears.”

            Monica nodded, eyes on Billy. “We’ve been friends a while now, haven’t we?”

            Sara thought back, fondly. “Since Marlo came to us. Little over a year now. Seems like such a long time,” with this she gestured to Billy, who was a stranger to his two year old past.

            “Yeah. And you trust me, right?”

            “Of course. Lord, I’m drained.” She laid her head back against the sofa, seeing stars on the ceiling as she yawned and attempted to stretch.

            “I know the feeling,” she was distracted, tracing her hand down Billy’s pyjama-clad back. “Listen – Sara. I’m sorry about this.”

            “’Bout what?” Her voice was thick with the yawns, her throat almost too tired to let the words come tumbling out.

            “The way this is going to happen. I thought about how best to work things out, you know, because we’re friends. I wondered how I was going to tell you.”

            “Tell me what?” But an idea occurred to her like a lightning bolt. “Oh Monica, honey. It’s not your baby is it? He is doing ok, right?”

            “Sure. He’s fine. It’s not my baby. It’s yours.”

            “What?” She sat bolt upright, and the stiffness of her neck sent pain radiating down her spine. “Marlo?”

            “No. William.”

            “Billy? How do you mean?”

            “When he came to you, he had a small bag of things, didn’t he? Little soft toy, cute hat, and a small piece of paper?”

            “I remember. A little kiss. We still have it; he likes to look at it before he goes to sleep.”

            “No. It’s not a kiss. It’s an ‘x’.” She crossed her fingers in front of her chest to make the letter. “A call for help.”

            “Monica, are you sure that punch wasn’t alcoholic?”

            Monica laughed as she breathed out deeply. “Believe me; I’m as shocked as you are. I wasn’t certain that she’d written anything at first.”

            “She? She who?”

            “His mother. His birth mother, I mean. The one who gave him up.”

            “Monica… what the hell is this?”

            “Believe me Sara, I’m on your side.”

            Sara had a sinking feeling that perhaps Monica was not the member of the mommy and baby group that she could trust. “Oh god. You’re not from the agency are you? You’re not here to take him off me?” The way she’d looked at him, at her, at Marlo, so sad and slow and collected, the way she had touched his hair as though he were breakable… oh god.

            “No! Not at all. You’re his mom. I want to protect him. And you.”

            This was all too surreal. “You’re not a crime writer?”

            “Well… I am. I mean, I tried a novel once. It tanked, of course. Apparently it was too ‘spooky’.” She stood up sternly, gave a sort of salute to Sara and grinned cheerily. “I’m an FBI agent. Was. Used to be.”

            “You quit, when you had your baby?”

            Monica raised an eyebrow. “I was fired.”

            “Well. You kept your hidden past secret,” Sara grinned. As much as Monica being an ex-FBI agent wasn’t something she had ever contemplated, one thing had a knack of leading to another when Billy was involved.

            “So what does that have to do with my boy?”

            “Hard to say right now. She was an FBI agent too, his mother – we worked together.”

            “You knew her?” This pricked all the senses of motherhood that Sara possessed, she’d had questions in her mind about Billy since the beginning.

            “Yeah, long time ago now though. A lot has changed.”

            “Is she after him – does she want him back?”

            “No. Well, I mean, yes, but that isn’t the problem here. Scu – she isn’t the one placing William in danger.”

            “Then who is?”

            “Not here,” Monica looked furtively at the ceiling, as though afraid that God was listening into their conversation. “There’s someplace we can go. Not far from here. And we can talk.”

            Sara nodded curtly, Monica’s anxiety passing to her like a translucent emotional handkerchief, and looked sadly at Billy. “I’d better call Jack down.”

            “No,” Monica blurted, “bring him. I’ve a car out front. He needs to stay where we can see him. And as for Jack – you can’t tell him. At all. Tell him and you make him an accomplice. Just… trust me.”

            Sara wanted to, oh so badly wanted to trust the only member of mommy and baby to hold a proper conversation with her, but Monica was frightening her. She shrugged, moving to hoist her son into her arms. One thing tended to lead to another with Bill. She figured they’d only be gone a few hours. Back in time for the 10pm news, and Marlo’s night-time wake up, regular as clockwork.

            Monica moved quietly, gathering up Billy’s things at Sara’s instruction. The hat, the plush alien, the embroidered pillow, and the framed ‘x’ – all of which Monica insisted that they needed. She lingered over the pillow, tracing the boy’s name, eyes closed as if imagining Billy much younger, having memories of Sara’s son that Sara herself did not possess.

            “What’s her name?”

            Monica looked up, angrily, and wiped the tears from her eyes. She stroked Billy’s sleepworn hair on the back of his neck. “Dana. Dana Scully.” She stared at the boy, two years and four months since his mother gave him up. Sara stared too, eyes looking in new directions, over the red-haired son of two dark-haired southerners. William Scully. That was not her baby’s name.


	2. DANA SCULLY I

Two years and four months, exact to the day. The clock on her desk chimed 10pm, making it two years, four months and twenty two minutes exact to the second. What kind of mother doesn’t wish her son happy birthday when he turns three? The kind who gave him up.

            It could just as easily have been yesterday that he was born, because her life was full of yesterdays and ‘remember when?’.  Her life existed only in the past; the future was like a roadtrip that had long since been planned, but never actually begun. Her mind closed on the road that could take her West, where William was probably sleeping off his birthday party.

            The apartment was cold and silent, but for the humming of electrical current underfoot. She sat in the dark on the floor of the small bedroom, two photographs on the carpet: an ultrasound of William, and a picture she had taken of Mulder and the baby when Mulder hadn’t been looking.  It was one of the few things he didn’t know about, this photograph, and she had kept it from him like she had kept her first kiss and the secret behind the scar on her left ankle. It was not for lack of trust, her secrecy, but from her desire to own an identity outside of their intense schedule of moving on and moving fast; of locking doors and leaving no trails that Mulder called life.

            It had been months since she had looked at the map. Mulder had chided her for this, said it was like keeping your first tooth or a handprint you made when you were six, but she had not taken the bait. She’d continued to mark the map with coloured pens and coloured dots, tracing their journey from north to south to god knows where; marking motels and rented apartments and pets that had died. Each time they left, and packed up their mobile life, she had consulted her map, making notes here and there for future reference. He’d worry if she told him that this was for William. So she’d let it die out, this habit of marking their life, and let the years become a blur of state lines and takeout pizza, until all she had left of herself were the two photographs.

            There were times when they spent months apart. Times when he’d leave her in a dustbowl with nothing but a pocketful of ten dollar bills and a motel key, and say he’d be back soon. Times when he didn’t come back on time, and she ran out of money, and the world became a harvest of dark things and strange beds and more secrets to keep from him. Times when she could hardly remember being a real person, with a job and a purpose and a home and a baby. Times when she’d flick through her cell phone in the midday glare, and wonder how Reyes would react to a sudden call after two years of silence.

            “Dana what’s wrong?”

            “How soon can you get here?”

            The amount of times she’d planned that phone call, that confession of loneliness and resentment… she’d lost count somewhere between Idaho and East Hell, Nowhere. She couldn’t even recall if she and Monica had ever really been friends. That X-Files office was now as blurred as the road ahead.

            Happy birthday William. And she took the scissors in hand, split open as she began to cry, and pressed the blade to her inner forearm, slicing through the giving skin to leave a traceline next to the other two marks. Now there were three cuts in total, each one a year apart, traced on his birthday each year, never too deep but always leaving a reminder. She reasoned like a madman: the sooner she got to him, the fewer scars she’d end up with. It was fantasy, all fantasy, but the pain tasted like redemption and Mulder never took the time to look anymore, and it was this power of secrecy that kept her alive through the nights.


	3. MONICA REYES I

All things considered, the night had gone smoothly. The plan had become convoluted to the point of insanity, but she’d become too emotionally attached to allow the plan to go ahead without some sort of explanation. Originally, she’d intended to take the boy without his mother’s permission. All things considered, William was in danger and needed to be protected, and up until a year ago she’d felt a thick resentment for the woman raising Scully’s baby. Yet things were different now, her heart was involved, and her heart went out to Sara Van De Kamp. Friendship was hard to come by in Monica’s line of work – rogue FBI agents had a habit of being isolated – and Sara was nothing short of a godsend.

            William slept through the entire car journey. Sara had questions, an entire ream of questions that had Monica wishing she’d taken John’s advice and drugged the mother to sleep. She placated the woman gently, assuring her that little Billy was fine, sure he was fine, nothing to worry about, you’ll be home in no time, with her thin lips and cold eyes that had long since perfected the art of lying. She kept her eyes on the road and her ears on the darkness, driving, driving, driving.

            The past two years had been a hell made of driving and silence. At Skinner’s insistence both she and John had taken to the road a few months after Mulder and Scully. They’d had a wilted last supper in a desert-side diner and had driven off in opposite directions into the night. She’d dropped that ‘Special Agent Reyes’ crap by the time she’d even reached the first town, and by now she was little other than Monica, who everyone in the mommy and baby class knew but never actually spoke with.

            All things considered, working as a lone agent suited Monica, she rather thought. Infiltration had never been her strongest point, yet she had conducted this mission perfectly. Joining the mommy and baby class had been an act of desperation, a leap into the night to reach for the baby she had lost, like she had lost William. The lies had tumbled out like secrets told to a stranger, and had built up until a web of deceit surrounded the friendship she shared with Sara. She told lie after lie to earn more of the woman’s trust, to be invited for supper and parties, to be close to William, the first baby she had learned to love.

            And then, of course, it had happened. One thing tended to lead to another with Billy, that’s what Sara said like a mantra whenever something intriguing happened to the boy, laughing off his strangeness as though it were something trite and comical. ‘He has alien DNA’ was what Monica wanted to say, instead her heart got involved and all she could whisper was adoring praise. To begin with, that’s all it had been about: William. She’d tracked him like a kidnapper, having access to the most secret of files – after all, it had been her secondary signature on the adoption forms. She’d known him at first sight, his red hair a beacon, his brown eyes a freeze frame of Mulder in full focus.

            “What the hell ever happened to keeping things on the down low?” She’d scowled down the phone at him.

            “Believe me there’s nothing ‘down low’ about this.”

            “About what?”

            “I spotted a local detective coming in and out of the facility. A lot. I followed him home, and he didn’t exactly invite me in, but long story short he told me what I wanted to know.”

            They’d both become renegades in their estrangement from the FBI, as ruthless as the alien conspirators they hunted and were hunted by. “Which was…?”

 


	4. WALTER SKINNER: A MEMORY

William. Eight months. Teething; screaming up a storm at the ice white ridges cutting up through his gums, and thumping his pained fists against his jacket as he cradled the child for the second night in a row. Scully and Doggett were stranded in Wyoming overnight because of freak weather, Maggie was weekending in a condo in Florida, and Reyes had what she auspiciously called ‘a date’. Skinner had made a joking warning about inner-office romances, thinking of leering Follmer, and Reyes had rolled her eyes at William.

            Skinner felt like the au pair as he unfolded his limbs on the sofa, William sprawled across his beer belly, chewing on Mulder’s old FBI badge to sate his teeth. The TV channels were running on empty, Scully too conservative to pay for the good stuff.

            She’d asked him twice before about adoption. The first had been a throwaway comment, three weeks after they had buried Mulder in the icy earth, and he had answered honestly, with goodness in his heart and a cloud in his mind that told him that Scully, this Scully who he knew like a daughter, could not be serious. The second time had been after she’d dragged the baby back from whatever hell that cult had left him in. The kid hadn’t sleep for weeks, wincing when she touched him, crying when she left, and Skinner had been loath to offer her details about adoption, from fear that she’d take action. For Mulder, he’d told himself as he took over her duties, reading Moby Dick to the boy and bringing pie for his exhausted mother. The third, and final time, had been last week. She’d been silent after his questioning of what she was thinking, she’d not reacted when he’d slammed the door and fixed her with his most dangerous glare. “What are you thinking?” and “Are you crazy?” and all she had to offer was her blank expression and the puncture marks on the baby’s neck. Crazy.

            William wriggled on his chest. Skinner wondered what his first words were going to be. Whether he’d believe in aliens or in science. Whether he could understand what was happening; why Scully and Doggett were really out in Wyoming. The baby opened his mouth wide and glared at Skinner accusingly, plucking at the new sharp points, brow furrowed.

            “I know kiddo, life hurts and then you die.” He stroked the faint hair coming through. Most of all, he wondered if William would call him ‘uncle’.

            “When Mulder gets back –“ he began, then caught himself with a chuckle; the baby frowned. “When _daddy_ gets back, he’ll take you to the baseball. How’s that?” William threw the badge onto the floor with a vindictive grunt and lifted himself onto all fours. Skinner set him down on the ground to crawl and laughed at the attitude this kid had already. All his mother’s, Skinner was certain.

            As the baby began to roll here and there about the room, Skinner peered down again at the forms on the low table. Adoption papers. “What are you thinking?”; “Are you crazy?”; she would never listen to him.

            “Will, there’s a heated bottle in that kitchen with your name on it,” he called over his shoulder to the baby who absently gurgled and returned to staring up into the fish tank.

            Adoption. It must only be temporary care, Skinner could not imagine anything more. Wouldn’t dare to let himself imagine, wouldn’t let the thought enter his head: Scully was distraught, he imagined that, but to leap to such extremes…? Skinner was never an optimist, but something as insane as this could only be a joke.

            “Kiddo: bottle.” Skinner padded barefoot over to the baby and the tank. “Bottle. That means bed. Sleep and quiet and not waking up ‘til at least noon, hear me?”

            As he hauled him up, William stretched out an arm to touch the glass.

            “Fish,” Skinner parroted, as a force of habit. William made no attempt to copy the noise, and instead wriggled in frustration at not being able to grasp the creatures.

            Skinner toted him towards the nursery, Moby Dick and warm bottle in hand. “Kid, I’ll bet your first words will be ‘I want’.”


	5. SARA VAN DE KAMP II

The motel room was grungy, and empty, but warm, and what it lacked in comfort it made up for in security. She’d booked the room under her childhood friend’s name and the Irish receptionist had waggled an eyebrow at two women checking in with a kid. Sara deposited her son in the middle of the king size bed, and he stretched and whimpered for orange juice. She fetched a carton from her supplies bag, and fixed Monica with a strong glare.

            “Explain,” she all but growled. It was late, much later than she’d indented to be out, and Marlo was no doubt missing her.

            Monica seemed to sense that nonsense would not suffice right now. “Two years and four months ago, a man called Jeffrey Spender injected an iron compound into an FBI agent’s baby. The boy represented a pivotal pawn in a game between alien-human hybrids; a sort of trump card to guarantee the success of their eventual colonisation. The boy was essential, and this injection polarized the anomalies in his DNA, rendering the alien parts junk, and the rest… human.”

            Sara’s eyes flicked to Billy, who was zipping and unzipping Monica’s jacket pockets, fixated by the noise. She gulped. “And this kid, this baby, was my Billy?”

            “Yes.”

            Alien-human hybrids… Billy with junk alien DNA… iron compounds…? Was she expected to believe this?

            “And this FBI agent, she gave him up – to me – to keep him out of their way?”

            “To keep him safe, yes.”

            Sara weighed this up; this woman as a martyr for alien colonisation, handing over her child to total strangers… it had a sense of poetry to it that Sara thought made just about enough sense considering Billy’s strangeness.

            “And why all of this now? What’s changed?”

            “These past two years, they’ve been busy. William represented the crux of their mission, an easy way to the finish line. They weren’t going to let him go that easily. This Jeffrey Spender – he shared DNA with William – not much, but enough. There’s such a thing as –“

            “Wait,” Sara sat in the creaky wicker chair, eyes on Monica. “Shared DNA?”

            “He and William’s biological fathers were half-brothers.”

            She said this so simply, as though Sara ought to have expected that the world and his wife were involved in her son’s early childhood, this entire period of his life that Sara had only guessed at before. Monica waited patiently before continuing:

            “There’s such a thing as mitochondrial DNA, sort of like genetic markers that we all share. Passed on through time, each person possessing one of four base groups, each one originating somewhere different in terms of evolution: Eurasian early man, African, and so on.” She said it all as though it was parroted information, learned from a doctor or, god forbid, stolen from an official. “William and Spender shared these genetic markers and, through mutilating Spender’s DNA, these alien-human hybrids, these supersoliders, have figured a sort of reversal formula. A cure for the cure, if you will.”

            Cure for the cure…? Sara rubbed her temples, not following at all. “And they want Billy? Want to inject him with this new DNA? Make him their free pass again?”

            Monica nodded. “My ex-partner uncovered a bunch of new files on your son about a year ago, with his name and genetic mapping. They know everything about you: address, social security numbers, Marlo’s first word, everything. There was never any evidence that they were going to act on these plans, to take him back, until a couple of weeks ago.”

            And suddenly, as though Billy had connected the final dot in one of his preschool drawings, everything became clear: Monica – her only friend outside of the house, the only woman at the mommy and baby class to listen to her – a liar and a trickster, and worse – a source of danger. Billy and his oddities, connecting together through the years, the strange circumstances in which he’d come to be her son, the way he’d cry **before** a thunderstorm even got close, the way his first words had been a conversation clear as crystal with Puck the dog.

            “And Marlo? Oh god – Marlo – she isn’t involved in this, is she?”

            “We couldn’t recover files on her. We checked but…” an exasperated shrug, “We found William’s records because we knew his birth details – Marlo wasn’t Marlo before she came to you so…” She let that hang, slipping her shoes off and beginning to relax now that the storytelling was apparently over.

            Monica sat on the twin bed against the other wall, drawing her knees up to her chest, the whites of her eyes staring out towards Billy in the midnight gloom. “Get some sleep Sara. The days only get longer from here on.”

            “What’s the plan?” There had to be a plan. FBI agents always had a plan, ex-FBI or not. These hybrids had everything planned down to a fine art; Monica surely had a plan to rival theirs, right?

            “Run.”

            Wrong. “That’s your big plan? That’s how FBI agents deal with this sort of thing?”

            “Why break from tradition? We keep running until my partner finds a way to stop this, or until we find somewhere safe for this child.”

            Sara curled on the bed beside her sleeping boy. He was wrapped in Monica’s leather jacket, the alien plush toy stuffed next to his collarbone. “I won’t lose him, will I? Like his other mother, will I be forced to give him up?”

            Her urgency must have spoken to Monica, who smiled dimly. “No one ever forced her. He’s your son. If you love him, hold onto him. But make sure you hold real tight.”

            Real tight. Sara nodded and slipped her arms around the boy real tight, his breath sticky against her shoulder, his hair smelling of home and Marlo’s baby shampoo. The thoughts crept in as she swayed towards sleep, the doubt and the panic and the nightmarish suspicions of the future. Another thought interrupted, sharp and pressing and somehow all-important.

            “Monica?” The other woman made a noise of assent in the darkness. “Monica, you never had a child, did you?”

            Silence. And then a quiet huff of breath, and Monica shifted on the bed. “No.”

            Lies, thought Sara, how much more of her life hung on a lie?


	6. TEENA MULDER: A MEMORY

Fox was three, which was difficult enough, but Teena was newly pregnant and this boy was far from average.

He was three years and six months, to be precise, and his father had visited recently. No – not Bill – the _other_ one. **Him**. Teena had done enough explaining to Fox to last a lifetime: “Say please and thank you Fox”; “Do as he says Fox.”; “Let him kiss you goodnight Fox.” Whenever she used his name he deliberately disobeyed, and she suspected that this was a ploy from Bill to make up for her far out name choice. She’d let him name this new child, if that would keep him happy.

            But Fox had been more trouble than normal this past week. His father – other, not Bill; Teena wasn’t sure how to address him after such a long time – pondered over the boy, taking him out fishing only to return four hours later, Fox brimming with stories of strange train cars and really bright lights.

            “Kid’s got an imagination,” he’d remarked of his son, disinterestedly. Yet when she questioned him, Fox was adamant that he’d never been fishing, no way mom, no stinky fish, just really bright lights and fellas in smart clothes. Adamant.

            She questioned the man, who was master of the art of deflection, and he commented on her pregnancy, when in fact she had not mentioned a breath of it to him.

            “Come Fox,” he beckoned to the boy, “let’s go catch us a Moby Dick.”

            And, predictable as the western sun, Fox came back brimming with stories, and said that he guessed they’d be shooting Moby Dick down with a real flash gun – real gun mom, he showed me.

            He left. Bill returned from the business trip, and Teena managed to pull off her illness that next week as morning sickness, whilst at night she slipped from Bill’s arms to watch her son in dreams, the alien plush toy that **he** had bought stuffed next to his collarbone.


	7. DANA SCULLY II

“Mulder, he knows when it’s raining before it’s raining.”

“So?” He wasn’t disinterested in his son, merely overly concerned for Scully’s interest in the kid they’d given up when life was something different.

“He used to cry when I took him out in the stroller until I pulled the little cover over the top. Hour or so later, it would rain.”

“Scully. Stop.” Over the phone his voice sounded fake, as though what he was really saying was “Scully. Tell me more about our son. Fill my head with his picture and tell me how you measured his heartbeat every day, just to check, just in case”.

            Instead his voice came on through that little bit thinner than in real life. “Just go back to sleep. I don’t know why you insist on calling me whenever you wake up in the middle of the night; you know I can’t talk now any more than I can during the day.”

            He was intentionally mean. Back west (or wherever he was this week) his favorite cover story was of a godawful wife at home, the kind you couldn’t wait to escape, and Scully was always left to play along. “Because of the rain Mulder.”

            “It isn’t raining.”

“Yet.” She wanted him to take interest, to open up a file on this kind of phenomena and tell her that science was about as useful and relevant as a dustball.

“Scully, you can’t tell when it’s raining.”

He was no fun these days. The cut on her arm had healed enough so that she could wear a sleeveless shirt without worrying, and she heard the warning clicks as the quarters in the payphone began to run out, and she didn’t have any spare in her pocket, so she sighed. “Mulder, just watch for the rain, ok?”

She hung up before the payphone could cut her off. Small victories like this made her an FBI agent again, gun toting and heel-wearing and full of mystery. It was a short walk to the motel room that Mulder got her two weeks ago, if she walked fast. She kept her pace slow, tasting metal on the air, the little hairs on her arms prickling up as clouds moved over the moon. She’d almost reached the precinct when it started to rain.


	8. JEFFREY SPENDER: A MEMORY

“Dad, why does Fox have a band aid on his hand?”

“Does it really matter?” Dad was grumpy. Down in the grumps, mom said. Dad lived in the grumps.

            Jeffrey was six, and Fox was seven, and Jeffrey thought dad must know that yes it does matter. “’Specially when it’s a superman band aid.” He added importantly, wiggling an eyebrow up at his father. They stood at the edge of the green lake, staring out at the water. Dad had said they were going fishing, yet Jeffrey knew that dad’s idea of fishing did not involve actual fish. Fox was some way off in the grass, kicking a baseball about with his clumsy feet.

            “Fox had a shot,” dad said simply. “Remember when you had yours?”

            Jeffrey nodded carefully. Sure he remembered. He and Fox were getting shots all the time, but he couldn’t ever remember superman band aids.

            “Why do we need shots all the time? And why don’t I get the superman band aids?”

            Dad sighed less-than-patiently, and as he twitched about Jeffrey saw the gun holster strapped to his belt and, not for the first time, wondered if he and Fox could steal it somehow. “Because you’re very special boys, and lots of people are interested in special boys. And Fox’s daddy gave him the superman band aid.”

            “Why are we special?” Jeffrey didn’t like special, mommy cried when dad called him special, said that Fox was the special one and that dad should leave Jeffrey alone.

            “Because you and Fox are important. To me, to Bill, to the whole world.” That kind of thing sounded fine and dandy to Jeffrey, that the whole world and his wife were interested in him. “You have a part to play Jeffrey. You’ll understand when you’re older.” Now those were words to set his anger alight. Mom had said those words when he’d asked where Samantha came from. He felt as though older would never come, and he’d never understand.

            “Why are we important?” He cocked an eye up at dad, who was considering him.

            Away in the grass, Fox slugged the baseball into the lake. He laughed coldly. “Because we’re aliens Jeff.”

            Jeffrey looked up at his father, alert.

            Dad rubbed his temples. “For the last time Fox: there’s no such thing as aliens.”


	9. MONICA REYES II

William woke up before Sara, quiet and calm and careful not to wake her as he disentangled himself from her arms and crept over the Monica’s bed: he could see that she was awake.

            “Hi,” she whispered, mindful of Sara.

            He smiled.

            “Want breakfast?” The boy shrugged. “Want to go to the bathroom?” He nodded gravely.

            Monica had fallen asleep in her demins and her red long-sleeved tee; she found her jacket on the floor near William’s side of the bed and bundled the boy in his coat before stepping out with him. The motel, for all its cheapness, only offered a single communal bathroom the other side of the precinct. There was no one else about in the dawn light as she led him by the hand.

            She fetched food from the receptionist’s counter while William busied himself in the bathroom. He’d known her for a year, and for a three year old that was longer than he could remember, and when he padded back to her side he grinned up at her familiarly and took the bagel that she offered. Monica pondered the kid as they perched on a bench in the precinct. It would take less than twenty seconds to have him out of the bounds of the motel, half a day and they could be in another state. He wouldn’t complain, wouldn’t cry that she was kidnapping him. He’d follow her quite happily, and sing along to the CDs in the rented car, and it might even be four days before he began to miss his mother. Four days, and she could hand the child over to Doggett, and that was where things might get difficult.

            She wondered how easy it would be; whether or not this boy knew he was adopted. Certainly, there were things that he just knew, without any doubt or hesitation.

            “William –“ she began, but he turned his head up to her.

            “No one calls me William ‘cept you. Why?”

            She’d told Sara to hold on to him tight, real tight. How tight would be tight enough? “Because a while ago I knew a boy called William, and he was a lot like you.”

            “Did he know things too?”

            “Sure. You’re a special boy William.”

  1.             “I know,” he took a particularly large bite of bagel as if to prove this fact. He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and said “Did you know my mother?”       



            Monica’s eyebrows went skyward, and she jabbed him in the ribs. “What mother? Your mom’s asleep in the room.”

            He rolled his eyes, certain that she was dumb or slow. “Sure. That’s my mom. But my mother, did you know **her**? There’s another, isn’t there? I saw her picture.”

            What picture? Monica’s mind did backflips, panicking that Sara had kept something from her, that Scully had been in contact with the family, breached the rules that they’d drawn up two years and two months ago.

            He saw her confusion, and smiled kindly. “Her picture in here,” and he tapped his forehead. “I see her face sometimes when I wake up. She has red hair, like me.”

            Not for the first time, Monica wondered what else was in Spender’s cocktail injection. “How do you know these things William?”

            “I just know,” he said confidently, finishing off his bagel and sipping from the soda can.

            “Do you know what adopted means?”

            He nodded, “Sure. Marlo was adopted. It means God gave her as a present to my mom and daddy because they’d been good. I was adopted too, I guess mom and dad were good a lot. Did you know her – my mother?”

            Monica chuckled; somebody give the boy a medal for perseverance. “Well. Yes. Long time ago though. You were very little then, and you had no hair at all, and you wore diapers.”

            He scrunched his nose up.

            “And when you were born, when you were all brand new, you screamed and screamed all the way in the helicopter.”

            “Helicopter?” That got his eyes wide and shining, and he froze with the can halfway to his mouth.

            “Yeah! A big old noisy chopper. Your mother was sick after you were born, so she had to see a doctor quick, and your father arrived in a chopper so we took that. And I held you all the way, and you were wriggling all over the place.”

            “You held me when I was born?” His eyes couldn’t possibly get any wider. He gleamed up at her, the soda can forgotten, for the first time hearing stories about the beginning of his life.

            “Sure I did,” she beamed at him. Half a day to get out of state, if only she had the heart to take his hand and run.

            “Wow. But let’s not tell mommy, about the chopper. She might get upset.”

            Monica smiled down at him. “Because of you knowing about your other mother?

            He finished off the soda. “No. Because she’s always wanted to ride in a chopper.”


End file.
